The party is registered with Elections Canada as the Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada. Elections Canada, the agency which oversees elections and political parties, claimed that, in order to avoid confusion among voters, it could not allow political parties to register with similar names. In this case, Elections Canada argues that allowing the party to use its preferred name could cause confusion with the Communist Party of Canada — a decision opposed by the CPC-ML.

The Internationalists were initially a Maoist student group but, as a result of their growth, they declared themselves a formal political party on March 31, 1970, and adopted the name "Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist)".

The party first ran candidates for the House of Commons of Canada during the 1974 federal election but has had to run them as candidates of the "Marxist–Leninist Party of Canada" after Elections Canada ruled that the party's preferred name was too close to that of the Communist Party of Canada. However, the party continues to call itself the CPC-ML outside of its federal electoral activities.

During the 1980s, the CPC-ML adopted a slogan of "We are our own models" and began to seek a new ideological approach. Because of differences in theory, the CPC and CPC-ML have never united as one party.

On January 1, 1995, the party put forward a broad program of work for the current period, which it has named the Historic Initiative. This was further elaborated during its Seventh Congress.

From 1997 to 2008, the party's leader was Bains' widow, Sandra L. Smith. Smith has never run as a candidate in a general election despite being the leader. In 2008, Anna Di Carlo became the leader of the party's electoral arm, the Marxist–Leninist Party of Canada[3] while Smith remains First Secretary of the CPC-ML itself and president of the MLPC.[4]

CPC-ML has also been active in the movement against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In recent years the party has adopted its own "Contemporary Marxist–Leninist Thought". Its Eighth Party Congress was to be held in 2005 with the theme "Laying the Foundations for the Mass Communist Party",[5] but the congress was delayed due to the federal election.[6] The congress was held in September 2008.

The CPC-ML has a news-sheet, The Marxist–Leninist Daily, a youth wing, the Communist Youth Union of Canada (Marxist–Leninist), and operates the "Workers Centre" which helps educate and organize trade unionists through discussion groups, and a magazine, Worker's Forum. The party often conducts broader political activity under the name "People's Front" and uses that name for the British Columbia provincial wing of the party. (see People's Front (British Columbia)). In Ontario provincial elections, CPC-ML supporters have most recently run as Independent Renewal candidates.

The party has run candidates in Canadian federal elections since 1972, with the number of candidates in any one election ranging from as few as 51 and as many as 177. Most of its candidates have run in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. It was most prominent in the 1979 federal election and 1980 federal election, running under the slogan "Make the rich pay."